Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Can I just expand a little on that? It would be quite useful to hear about the changes that were made in the UK with regard to smaller companies. Usually when there is a newspaper headline relating to corporate tax, the response is that a small number of companies pay the vast majority of corporate tax and that is actually the case. However, Dr. Keegan has drawn a distinction between close companies and how their tax is treated and other companies. In actual fact, we are not comparing like with like. We are not talking about 107,000 companies being liable for corporate tax - only a portion of those companies are liable. Dr. Keegan also described the tax treatment of close companies as "penal". It could be viewed as an inhibitor in terms of Irish companies growing if we cannot apportion tax in a fair way and if some groups of companies are enjoying a disproportionately advantageous tax treatment in comparison with others. Smaller or close companies appear to have a bigger hill to climb. What changes did they make in the UK? Were those changes assessed in terms of whether they improved the prospect of survival of companies or the flourishing or even the incorporation of those companies if they grew enough to trade outside of the jurisdiction?